Kb. Grier et Jp. Mcgarrity, Presidential party, incumbency, and the effects of economic fluctuations on House Elections, 1916-1996, PUBL CHOICE, 110(1-2), 2002, pp. 143-162
There is little professional consensus regarding the effect of economic con
ditions on House Elections. We argue that recent work still uses the paradi
gm of Party to organize their data and tests. Given that recent development
s in the theory of congress emphasize the paradigm of Incumbency, we invest
igate the empirical relevance of that competing paradigm. We show that (1)
Incumbency matters in a pure Presidential Party Model of House Elections, (
2) Presidential Party matters in a pure Incumbency Model, (3) Once both Par
ty and Incumbency are accounted for, economic conditions exert a highly sig
nificant and temporally stable influence on House elections, (4) Return Rat
es are more affected by economic fluctuations than are Vote Shares, and (5)
Not all Presidential Party incumbents face the same degree of electoral ac
countability for economic fluctuations.